by M. D. Cooper
“No.” She shook her head, scooting further onto the bed. “I just remembered how we used to call other people ‘squishies’.”
“Used to?” He laughed and crawled onto the bed next to her. “I still do—at least in the confines of my own noggin.”
“Noggin,” Rika repeated with a snort. “You say all the sexiest words.”
Chase winked, moving to lay on his side next to her. He dragged a finger down the center of her chest, the metal digit making a light scraping sound against her carbon-fiber epidermis.
“Sweet light,” Rika whispered. “I love that sound.”
“What about the feel?”
She barked a laugh. “I love that too. You know how it feels—when we got upgraded to Mark 4, Earnest pulled out all the stops.”
Chase grinned as his hand slid further down her torso, arousal flooding Rika’s body.
“Stars, I need this,” she murmured. “A little calm before the storm.”
“Oh? I plan to do some storming.”
“Do you?” Rika smirked before rising up and flipping Chase onto his back. She swung a leg over his midriff, leaning forward with her arms on his shoulders. “What if I want to be the one assaulting the gates?”
He folded his hands behind his head, returning her wink with smirk. “You’re more than welcome to. This fortress is ready for it.”
“Not like sex takes five hours,” Chase replied. “Just a little nightcap.”
“No?” Rika’s tone was entirely innocent. “Well, I’d planned something that might take a bi—”
“Hey…don’t let me stop you!”
Joy-filled laughter burst from Rika, and she leant down, pressing her body to his, her lips brushing against his ear. “I love you, Chase. Don’t ever stop being at my side.”
He nuzzled his cheek against hers. “Never. I’ll chase you across the universe if needs be.”
CHAPTER 38 - CHEEKY
STELLAR DATE: 01.12.8960 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Illium
REGION: Indis System, Ansylis Alliance
“Annnnd we’ve lost her,” Cheeky said as she skipped down the stairs in the residential tower’s stairwell. “Great.”
“Kinda expected,” Fina said. “But if we hurry, we should be able to hear which direction they went.”
“Which will rule out only half the planet,” the captain groused. “Not a huge improvement.”
Fina chuckled. “Well, mathematically, it is.”
They reached the door at the maglev tunnel’s level and pushed it open. Before them lay a short passage and another tunnel. Cheeky nearly stepped into it, but a quick scan of the area raised an alarm.
It was too clean.
It only took a few seconds for the nanocloud to detect a number of sensors set into the walls, as well as an automated turret mounted in the ceiling above the far door.
The former Hand agent shrugged.
Cheeky rolled her eyes and followed Fina through the door and out onto the abandoned platform. They froze at the edge, doing their best to hear which way the train had gone, but unable to make anything out.
Cheeky was about to pick a direction at random, when Fina pointed down the left passage.
“Stars,” Cheeky groaned aloud. “You always did like to show off.”
“Old habits die hard.”
The two women jumped down into the trench and took off at a fast jog.
The two women fell silent, continuing to run through the tunnel until they reached the disused hub that led off in multiple directions. There was no sign of the car that had taken Sabs, nor did any tunnel entrance give a clue to the direction of their quarry’s travel.
The pair shared a look before Cheeky heaved a sigh. “Unless we want to piss off the locals and bring Sabrina down, I think we’re going to have to call in for help on this one.”
“Who did you have in mind?”
“I was thinking Usef’s team.”
“Ohhhh stars yes. You wanna stir shit up, don’t you?”
Cheeky shrugged. “They started it.”
CHAPTER 39 - RIKA
STELLAR DATE: 01.13.8960 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Warsaw
REGION: Farsis System, Independent Systems of the Lupus Cloud
Rika settled into her seat, checking over the shuttle’s controls and the preflight Kelly ran.
“It’s like you don’t trust me,” her long-time friend said, a hurt expression on her face.
“I trust you, I just don’t fly a bird I haven’t checked over myself.”
Kelly shrugged. “Whatever, I choose to take offense.” She folded her arms, turned her face toward the overhead, and closed her eyes.
Rika ignored her, plotting in a course to their planetside destination.
After half a minute, Kelly cracked an eye, the orb wheeling to take Rika in. “What? Nothing?”
“You think you can play me that easily?”
Kelly snorted. “It would work with Barne.”
A sigh slipped past Rika’s lips. “It would. Then Leslie would have slapped you upside the head. I wonder how they’re doing these days.”
“Buried in children,” Kelly replied. “I think Leslie is regretting having kids with her altered DNA.”
“Stars, can you imagine? Children are hard enough, but half-cat children with claws? Stars, no. All the no.”
“You ever thought about it?” Kelly asked. “You and Chase?”
Rika shook her head. “No…not yet, at least. I don’t want to raise kids here on the Overwatch, we get into too much shit.”
“You hear that, Keli?” Kelly called back to the rear of the shuttle. “We should wait.”
“Whatever!” the other SMI-4 called forward. “You pester me about it more than I bring it up.”
“She’s lying,” Kelly said, her expression shifting to a petulant sulk.
Rika snorted. “Sure she is. Shit…can you imagine? I remember what a bitch you used to be in the first war. I would have laughed myself to death if someone had suggested you as a mother. Your spuz-guzzling jokes alone ruled you out.”
“Gee, thanks, Rika.” Kelly’s expression was stony, but her tone belied a level of hurt.
“What I mean is that now I think you’d make an amazing mother. You’ve come into your own! You’re mature, conscientious…stars, woman, you’re soft.”
A caustic laugh slipped past Kelly’s lips. “Stop saying such hateful things.”
“What, that you’re soft?”
“Well, not so much that, but ‘woman’. Ewwww. I’m a mech, bitch.”
Rika laughed as the shuttle lifted off the cradle and drifted out of the bay on its a-grav drives.
he said, the note of mirth in his voice dampening the severity of his words.
A warm laugh came from her husband.
He chuckled, and a feeling of warmth came over her.
No matter what happened in their lives, a laugh from Chase was a consistent cure-all that could pull her out of almost any melancholy.
Chase snorted.
He sent a feeling of warmth and love before signing off, and Rika turned her attention to the flightpath that would take her back down to the capital campus on Warsaw.
“So, do you think we’ll grant these people a gate?” Kelly asked. “I did some mingling last night, and they seem like dicks.”
“You think everyone’s a dick, Kelly.”
“Do not.”
“Do too!” Keli shouted from the rear of the shuttle.
Rika glanced back at the other SMI-4 mech, who was lounging on one of the plush seats in the main cabin. “You know you can come up here, right?”
“Pfft. That’s where work and shit is.” As she spoke a servitor approached, carrying a flute of champagne. “This is where the smart girls ride.”
Kelly groaned. “I knew I got roped into something with all this copiloting nonsense.”
“Not like you do anything, anyway,” Rika said, leaning over and digging an elbow into her friend’s arm.
“Uh…who ran the preflight?”
“Wow,” Kelly grinned. “You can’t tell the difference between romantic love and sisterly love, can you?”
“Oh damn,” Rika coughed. “Mom’s bringing the hammer down.”
Kelly giggled, and conversation moved on to what they expected to find during their tours planetside.
The consensus was ‘nothing exciting’. Just ten hours filled with handshakes, and the locals pontificating about how they could meet all of the AoS’s requirements with ease.
Farsis was the seventy-nineth system Rika had visited in the past seven years working for the AoS as an ambassador. She’d kept telling Tanis that after just a few more systems, she’d be ready to turn over the job to someone else, but despite having to deal with a neverending stream of bureaucrats, Rika rather liked traveling from system to system, meeting more and more of the galaxy’s people.
Most of the time, at least.
One of the chief benefits were the side trips they got to take between diplomatic missions. In this case, Rika was eager to complete their tasks in Farsis and move on to Halmut. The Marauders were engaged in a variety of peacekeeping operations there.
Rika missed what she still considered to be her extended family, and fully intended to grill Admiral Heather on how she was treating Rika’s mechs.
It was all for the best, though. Heather needed to stretch her wings, and the mechs needed to get out of Genevia.
It still smarted to be so soundly rejected by her own people after the war with Nietzschea had ended. At the same time, it didn’t surprise her. The Genevians had turned a blind eye when their government made the mechs during the first Nietzchean war, and ignored the shattered cyborgs left behind when the enemy won.
That they’d ultimately behave no differently after the end of the second Nietzschean War was no real surprise.
Luckily, around the same time, Tanis had needed to augment her AoS forces, so Rika had left her home, taking the bulk of the Marauders with her.
She’d commanded the Marauders the first few years, until Tanis took note of Rika’s ability to solve problems without violence and asked if she’d be willing to pass command of the Marauders to a successor.
It was a strange situation to be in. Technically, Rika’s Marauders were still a mercenary company, though they no longer had any ties to their original parent organization, which was still based out of Sepe. However, they had full and unfettered access to all ISF military technology, making them one of the most powerful forces in the galaxy, despite numbering fewer than five thousand soldiers.
Long story short, Rika knew that she and many of her people owed their lives to the advanced tech that Tanis had freely made available to them—all because Tanis felt a connection to Rika that she’d never fully articulated.
Leaving that position was not a decision that had come easy, but Tanis had been in need, and Heather was more than capable of commanding the Marauders. In the end, Rika had agreed, taking her personal guard and the Overwatch along with her.
But not forever. Someday, I’ll return to the Marauders for good. They’re my family, after all.
“You going to apply that flightpath correction the STC just sent us, or should I?” Kelly asked.
“What?” Rika pulled herself back to the present. “Oh shit, they swapped our approach.”
“No.” Rika shook her head as she adjusted the shuttle’s course, shifting them from an oceanic to an overland approach. “I was thinking of the Marauders and how I’d like to return someday.”
“Oh yeah?” Kelly asked, turning her head and cocking an eyebrow. “How would that work? You’d just oust Heather and take over?”
“Of course not. But maybe we could form two divisions or something. Bolster our numbers, spread out….”
Kelly shrugged. “Sure, I’d be cool with that, I guess. Though it would be more fun if we became a spec-ops group—like you were with Basilisk before we moved into Genevia.”
“Some days more than others,” the SMI in the copilot seat said. “I mean, look at Keli back there—she’s just living it up nowadays.”
“Where are the naked men putting grapes in my mouth?” Keli called up from the main cabin. “I demand naked men!”
A laugh came from behind them. “Pretty sure naked manservants is the very definition of class.”
“Annnnnyway,” Rika added a cough. “We’ll at least get to see them when we’re done here. They’re just a short hop away in Uriah.”
“Not exactly on our way to the next stop.”
Rika glanced at Kelly. “Your point being?”
“No point.” She shrugged. “I guess I just felt obligated to say it. I’m all for playing hooky and seeing the fam.”
“So, what do you think?” Rika asked. “Two days to tour pointless government facilities, then finally get to check out some military sites and get real access to their internal customs and immigration systems on day three and four. Day five, we review, and then on day six, we do a mock infiltration test?”
“And then day seven, they get all pissy that they failed?” Kelly asked.
“Yup.” Rika nodded vigorously. “And I get the feeling these folks aren’t going to handle it well. They think they’re all that and a bag of chips.”
“Sorry?” Kelly tilted her head. “A bag of what?”
“I just heard it o
nce,” Rika said. “Not sure where, though.”
Niki chuckled.
“You forget things?” Kelly asked, eyes widening. “I thought AIs remembered everything forever.”
“Huh…I guess I never thought of it that way. What’s it like?”
“Knowing what you forgot.”
“You must know roughly what it was. Like an inkling.”
Rika could tell Niki was getting frustrated. “Stop messing with her.”
“Huh.” Kelly ran a hand through her short, blonde hair. “I never considered that angle. You really are a lot like humans.”
“It’s true,” Rika said, glancing at her friend. “Niki told me all the stories, about how the first truly free AIs were made from the minds of children. They were called the Weapon Born.”
“What happened to them?” Kelly asked. “Are they the core AIs?”
